


Nativity

by Royal_Ermine



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Bucky Barnes Recovering, M/M, POV Steve Rogers, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Protective Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 14:36:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13125726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Royal_Ermine/pseuds/Royal_Ermine
Summary: Infinity War shows Bucky Barnes alive and well, which means sometime between now (Christmas 2017) and the release of the film in 2018, he's been woken in Wakanda. This short Christmas special is just one of a billion suggestions as to how that might have happened!





	Nativity

All this waiting will be over soon, or so they say.

They’re going to remove all those memories. Everything from the recent past, the part of you that got wiped and overwritten so many times the thought processes grew thin and warped like the tape in an old video cassette.

Or so they say.

We missed out on all of that. Well I did, and I can’t imagine movie night was high on Hydra’s priority list for you.

Let’s just say it’s like the hisses and crackles on an old 78, the grooves worn down by the needle from too much playing. And if a record gets too worn, it's time to replace it with a new one, one without suffering or trigger words.

A little bit of me regrets that; regrets that you won’t remember that you still remembered me in spite of it all, but that’s silly and selfish. Far better that your fall from the train ends with a happy landing on a soft mattress.

I just don’t like making decisions for you, that’s all. Much less others making them without me really understanding, and having me consent to them, since you can’t give you own.

When I woke up in New York, they tried to make me feel “at home”, but it felt phoney; fake. I bolted.

I don’t want you to go through that. I’m not going to shove you in a replica 1930’s hospital ward. You’d see through it in a hot minute, and you’d never forgive me for the lie.

Still, anything that fiddles about in the brain is risky and traumatic. As you come round, the doctors say you’ll need to focus on pictures to adjust your visual acuity. And I didn’t want to alarm you with anything space-age in those early stages.

I looked up some images from Margaret Tarrant. She illustrated some children’s books I remember your ma having in her apartment. I thought it might be soothing to show you some of those.

But I couldn’t just scroll through pictures on a screen. The message might be comforting, but the medium would ruin it. How do I explain tablets, beyond the medicinal kind, to someone whose mind has been restarted in the ‘40s? 

The librarian here spent a good month tracking down one of her picture books. And it’s perfect. The smell of faintly foxed paper, the luxurious feel of the thick pages beneath the pads of your fingers. It even gives me goosebumps.

There was one of them…one of the pictures, I mean, that made me pause. It's a really simple nativity picture; mother gazing down, child gazing up, not even shepherds, wise men and animals to clutter the scene. Standard 20's/30's Christmas card fare really; the sort that most folks would get very sniffy about today.

And yes, it’s corny and dated and hopelessly sentimental, but at this time of year, it made me think.

We both got born; we had our own nativities, if you will, but I was so damn frail I'd never really felt like the birth had been worth it. I never felt truly alive. It was you…it was you who made me happy; who made me feel that life was worth fighting for. You were my friend when you didn’t have to be. You didn’t fight my battles for me; you fought my battles with me.

And though I didn’t know it then, I loved you.

And when you grew tall and strong and handsome, and I didn’t; you stayed my friend, you made me happy. Even on those ridiculous double dates, you made me happy.

Until you had to go to war, and still the pain in my heart didn’t have a name.

Because I didn’t know it then, but I loved you.

All I knew was I missed you.

I missed you so much.

I went through the training, through the changes, through the pain just to be with you, because I missed you. 

The changes made me look different. But inside I was still the same.

Inside I still missed you.

Inside I still loved you, but I didn’t know it…not then.

And, God bless you, you accepted the changes as if they were nothing, even though it was a hell of a big deal to everyone else. You were still following the little guy from Brooklyn; you were still fighting my battles with me.

And then I knew I loved you.

And then I knew you loved me.

And then I lost you. And that piece of my life that made me feel alive, that made me feel life was worth fighting for, just curled up and died.

But someone, maybe the big guy upstairs, who knows? But someone took pity on us.

So now…now I wait. 

Soon…soon my love, soon they’re going to operate. Soon your eyes will open and you’ll turn the pages of this hokey old picture book in your roughened hands.

And I’ll wait for you. I’ll kneel in front of you like in that nativity scene and this time we’ll both be alive.

I’ll gaze down at you. And you’ll gaze up at me.

I’ll love you, and you’ll love me.

And we’ll be together at last.

Soon, soon my love

I’m just waiting, now. Waiting for that miracle to happen.

And all this waiting will be over soon, or so they say.

**Author's Note:**

> Margaret Winifred Tarrant (1888 – 1959) was an English illustrator, and children's author, specialising in depictions of fairy tales and religious subjects.


End file.
